"Mr. South[?] Strange at Chesterville, Mississippi had a pony named Zane. The Yankees hemmed him and four more men in at Malone Creek and killed the four men. Zane rared up on hind legs and went up a steep cliff and ran three miles. Mr. Strange's coat was cut off from him. It was a gray coat. Mr. Strange was a white man.
"Uncle Frank Jones was forty years old when they gathered him up out of the woods and put him in the battle lines. All the runaway black folks in the woods was hunted out and put in the Yankee lines. Uncle Frank lived in a cave up till about then. His master made him mean. He got better as he got old. His master would sell him and tell him to run away and come back to his cave. He'd feed him. He never worked and he went up for his provisions. He was sold over and over and over. His master learnt him in books and to how to cuss. He learnt him how to trick the dogs and tap trees like a coon. At the end of the trail the dogs would turn on the huntsman. Uncle Frank was active when he was old. He was hired out to race other boys sometimes. He never wore glasses. He could see well when he was old. He told me he was raised out from England, Arkansas.
"When freedom was told 'em Uncle Frank said all them in the camps hollered and danced, and marched and sung. They was so glad the War was done and so glad they been freed.
"Grandma was sold in South Carolina to Mississippi and sold again to Dr. Shelton. Now that was my father's father and mother. She said they rode and walked all the way. They came on ox wagons. She said on the way they passed some children. They was playing. A little white boy was up in a persimmon tree settin' on a limb eating persimmons. He was so pretty and clean. Grandma says, 'You think you is some pumpkin, don't you, honey child.' He says, 'Some pumpkin and some 'simmon too.' Grandma was a house girl. She got to keep her baby and brought him. He was my father. Uncle was born later. Then they was freed. Grandma lived to be ninety-five years old. Mrs. Dolphy Wooly and Mrs. Shelton was her young mistresses. They kept her till she died. They kept her well.
"Grandma told us about freedom. She was hired out to the Browns to make sausage and dry out lard. Five girls was in the field burning brush. They was white girls—Mrs. Brown's girls. They come to the house and said some Blue Coats come by and said, 'You free.' They told them back, 'That's no news, we was born free.' Grandma said that night she melted pewter and made dots on her best dress. It was shiny. She wore it home next day 'cause she was free, and she never left from about her own white folks till she died and left them.
"Times seem very good on black folks till hard cold winter and spring come, then times is mighty, mighty bad. It is so hard to keep warm fires and enough to eat. Times have been good. Black folks in the young generation need more heart training and less book learning. Times is so fast the young set is too greedy. They is wasteful too. Some is hard workers and tries to live right.
"I wash and irons and keep a woman's little chile so she can work. I owns my home."